I’d like a list of really cool childhood toys: the kind that make you all warm remembering them. I’m betting a lot of them aren’t even made any more.
I’ll start with the Mattel football-blip game that Jerry played on that episode of Seinfeld when he and George continually got their friend drunk so they could play with her toys.
My favorite toy was this building set based on the Richard Scary books. It was called Puzzletown, and there were different sets that let you build various things such as a farm, a hospital, a house, etc. It came with little dolls of the Richard Scary characters.
I’ve only met one other person in my life who had Puzzletown as a child. My mom passed on most of our toys to younger cousins or neighborhood children or the Salvation Army, but Puzzletown will be mine forever. Some years we drag it out and set it up under the Christmas tree.
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
G.I. Joe (with Lifelike Hair and Kung Fu Grip)
Whirlybirds (a little battery-operated helicopter)
A Davy Crockett costume, including, of course, a raccoon-skin cap complete with tail (yes, I’m that old). And there was one other toy. It went “zip” when it moved, “pop” when it stopped, and “whirrr” when it stood still. I never knew just what it was, and I guess I never will.
When I was a kid my favourite toy was a stuffed unicorn my grandma made. I’m sorry it’s not some flashy, mass-produced gizmo of a toy, but that’s the kind of square I am.
But if it means anything to you I was also quite fond of She-Ra, Thundercats, Transformers, and My Little Pony.
Make that two, delphica. My sister and I still have all five sets - the hospital, the town center, the farm, the railroad, and Set D which I can’t remember what it is! We also have Lowly Worm’s eggmobile, but not the apple- or donutmobile. Puzzletown ROCKS!
I also have to put in a word for Mattel Tuf-Stuff Alphabet Blocks - made out of this funky plastic material and shaped like the letters themselves. Don’t have the original set from childhood but bought 'em on eBay this summer.
A baking powder powered sumbarine that rose and sank all by itself. Diecast spring-powered windup race cars (from Germany, I think) that went really fast. Any kind of cap pistol.
I recently sold one of these on eBay for $56.00. Mint, in the box, they are worth over $200.00
Jerry’s girlfriend was right, never play with your toys!
Well, I probably played with my stuffed animals the most–they had cool adventures, thanks to my imagination and their durability, but I also have very fond memories of my “Pitch-Back” set. It was a stretchy nylon web attached to a metal frame, with a square target in the center. You threw the ball at it, and it bounced back (like a wall wouldn’t work, you scoff–but the Pitch-Back worked with real baseballs). Anyway, if you hit the square, it came straight back, if you were high or low, a grounder or a pop-up, left or right bounced in the opposite direction (obviously). Because I was baseball obsessed, my friends often grew tired of playing ball well before I did, so this gave me many hours of fun. In fact, I wouldn’t mind owning one now. Santa, are you watching?
Mattel’s “Strange Change Machine”. This was a heating element with a screen over it. It was covered by an enclosure shaped like a truncated cone. Ah, heck. A quick google search turned up this site: http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/str.html
Pretty cool, what? You will acknowledge the coolness!
And of course, Creepy Crawlers.
Another cool toy was the SST. These were dragster-looking cars about 10" long with a heavy rubber-covered wheel in the middle. To use it, you have along plastic strip with teeth on it and a T-handle on the end, which you insert into a guide alongside the wheel. By pulling rapidly, the little gyroscope spins very fast (with a satisfying whir) and off it goes!
Verti-Bird. http://www.swcp.com/~sfcanci/toybox/Vertibird.html
The sets shown are more elaborate than the kind I had when I was a kid, but the first pic shows the heli very well. I played with this toy a lot! (Small wonder I fly the real thing now! ;))
I had a styrofoam delta-wing glider that had a Freon motor. Stick a tube up the nozzle, pressurize the cylinder with Freon, and you had a jet propelled glider! Don’t let the Freon hit your thumb when it comes out! These are long gone. Bloody EPA.
Hot Wheels. 'Nuf said. And Hot Wheels Sizzlers.
Estes rockets. My favourite was the Astron Sprint. Too bad they no longer have balsa nose cones.
Guillow’s flying balsa models.
My Little Pony! And Surfs, I still have a Smurf blanket and I so wish I had my Smurf stuffed animals, they’re so very expensive now.
Kitty
Coolness! Do you want to be my new best friend? If I remember correctly:
Set A: Hospital with Dr. Lion and Nurse Kitty
Set B: Huckle Cat’s House
Set C: Farmer Alfalfa’s Farm
Set D: Town Center with Mayor Fox and Officer Murphy
Set E: Railroad with Lowly Worm and ??
I have the donutmobile but not the eggmobile or the apple. If Lowly had the eggs, and Huckle had the donuts, who had the apples? A trip to ebay might be in order.
I had over 200 at the peak of my collecting age. I sold the collection, in bits and pieces, for more than $5,000 altogether during my college years. Mwahaha! …And I still kept the 20+ favorites (although most of them aren’t worth nearly as much as what I sold).
I love those things. I just wish I was a kid now; Reeves International has totally upgraded the stock with all kinds of tack, blankets, jumps, racing tack, trail riding acessories, stable equipment, and–I shit you negative–fake horse manure to “decorate” the stable with. I could do without that last item, however.
My favorite all-time childhood toy was my penis. Even before it responded in any sexual way, my little buddy was down there to flick and twiddle, spin and wag when I was bored. I had other favorite toys as well, but that one was always with me.
Needless to say, it remains one of my favorites into adulthood.
And, of course, the G.I. Joe U.S.S. Flagg.
Tinkertoys. No contest.
Holy smokes, Ruffian! I still collect them and I’m 35! I know a lot of us older folk are into collecting model horses nowdays. I have about 150 Breyers and 20 or so Stones. Peter Stone left Breyer and started his own company and has been putting out some fantastic, realistic models, with price tags to match. I don’t play with mine anymore (well…sometimes when no ones looking…) but they look great on my shelves.
The first was a low slung Big Wheel type thing made of metal and that steered by a stick turning the rear wheels. I think it was called the X-15 or something. Later my favorite would be Hot Wheels, and then later it was a gigantic chemistry set.
Take clear or tinted lucite blocks about 4" square. Drill “tunnels” through them. Some tunnels curves, so a tunnel might start at the “top”, make a turn and come out a side. Some “tunnels” had loop-the-loops. Each tunnel had a male and female “lip”. This allowed the lucite block to snap together, like legos. Once you had your tunnel all connected together, you dropped large, colored metal ballbearings in the top and watched them work their way through the tunnel. I have no idea why it was so fascinating, but if I found it again, I’d buy it!
The another toy I had fond memories of was a lite-brite, but it wasn’t the normal Lite-bright with the round pegs, it had square, rectangle and triangle pegs. Eventually, I put a black-light in, and it was really odd.
I also loved those 300-In-One electronic project kits from Radio-Shack (Connect a blue wire from 2-27 to 3-34)
Fenris
I have posted before about how my younger sister always got great toys, and I always got some crappy version of them. This is the prize one:
She got this life-sized stuffed gorilla that was the scariest thing I had ever seen. Neither of us liked it, so my mother got her this cute little red and white stuffed monkey. I wanted a monkey too, so she got me a black monkey.
We played with those little monkeys all the time, made up a whole book of monkey adventures, etc.
Years later, I realized my black stuffed monkey was a naked and ear-less MICKEY MOUSE DOLL. I don’t know where my mother got it, but I was horribly disillusioned by the whole thing.
Stretch Armstrong, no question. The Micronauts were pretty cool, too.